Earthquake in Turkey and Syria Inspires Activism at NYU
Turkish students at NYU have organized to raise awareness and donations for earthquake relief. Photo: Julia Kempton.
On the unseasonably warm afternoon after Valentine’s Day, life went on per usual in Washington Square Park, with masses of students smoking and gossiping, couples eating their lunches while young entrepreneurs offered them candy bars or drugs, and skaters circling the inside of the winterized fountain as a few live bands attempted to play over each other. But for the students speaking on the steps of NYU’s Kimmel Building, everything was different. Speaking at the Turkish Cultural Association’s vigil that afternoon, NYU History Professor Ayse Baltacioglu-Brammer said, “Your friends, your colleagues from Turkey, from Syria, they are not well.”
NYU had a Turkish students association before this month, at least in theory. There had been several efforts to organize WhatsApp chats over the years, but most fizzled out into spam or faded away after political disputes, leaving behind splinters of individual friend groups united by their experiences in New York’s Turkish diaspora. The only official registered club on NYU Engage, the Turkish Culture Association (President Selim Belgin, VP Kayra Oguz), was not hosting regular events. But then, in the early morning hours of Feb. 6, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Southern Turkey, followed by a series of aftershocks that devastated infrastructure and killed at least 47,000 people across Turkey and Syria.
Friends reached out to friends who reached out to acquaintances and professors, and within a matter of 48 hours a grassroots amalgamation of students, departmental faculty, and contacts at other universities’ Turkish student organizations had formed. By Feb. 9, a group of Turkish students had set up a table in the lobby of NYU’s Bobst Library, not waiting for a permit from the university (which came the following day) but primarily undisturbed by campus security. Their folding table and chairs were pilfered from an unlocked back room. They printed posters and full-color photographs in the library’s basement with their own print stipends. The images plastered around the desk begged students to recognize the tremendous tragedy that had occurred, that was still ongoing. By Feb. 10 a Turkish flag had materialized behind the information stand, which was manned by a rotation of Turkish student volunteers from 9 am to 6 pm daily.
The first messaging from NYU came from the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies department, which released a statement sharing mental health resources and a fundraiser spearheaded by Professor Baltacioglu-Brammer at 3:20 pm on Feb. 6. NYU Vice President and Dean of Students Rafael Rodriguez sent out an email to several Turkish students at NYU around 5:30 pm EST that evening (20 hours after the earthquake), and Dean Rodriguez quickly responded to catalog their suggestions for fundraisers and charitable organizations, but there was no university-wide statement. Distressing to many student organizers, NYU spent the day after the earthquake publicly celebrating National Pizza Day on its social media, while many survivors were still buried in the rubble.
On Feb. 9, the TCA group sent an email to Dean Rodriguez, CC-ing outgoing NYU President Andrew Hamilton, written collaboratively on behalf of Kayra Oguz. After that, TCA organizers said, the university response changed. Dean Rodriguez met in-person with a group of students. Dean Rodriguez, Professor Baltacioglu-Brammer, the students of the TCA, and others set about organizing a vigil to be held at Kimmel the following Wednesday. The TCA also reached out to the Muslim Students Association and Arab Students United to further involve Kurdish and Syrian students.
Washington Square Park on the evening of the Turkish Cultural Association’s vigil, on Feb. 15. Photo: Julia Kempton.
At 5 pm on Feb. 15, Selcuk Sirin, an NYU Steinhardt professor well-known in Turkey for his studies of psychology, spoke first. Professor Sirin was himself a student in Boston during the 1999 Izmit earthquake, and recalled creating an alliance of Turkish students in the Boston area. Saba Aydiner (Philosophy & MEIS, 2025) followed him. She introduced herself “as the daughter of a family that survived the ‘99 earthquake” and described the earthquake’s damage as indicative not only of natural disaster, but of a power conflict “exacerbated by inadequate infrastructure and delayed disaster responses in both [Turkey and Syria], [by] corruption, political instability, and neglect.”
When Yagiz Erdogdu (Urban Design & Architecture, 2025) took the lectern in his habitual round glasses and oversized blazer, he spoke at a breakneck pace. “I am held back by anger,” he explained, “anger towards those who knowingly ignored the threat [of an earthquake], who constructed buildings out of sea sand and concrete and skimped out on rebar in an area that sits on a fault line, who usurped and drained what little tools we had to respond to this otherwise inevitable disaster, inevitable perhaps in its happening, but certainly not in the magnitude of its destruction…. Disheartening still is the insensitivity that is displayed towards those who are perceived as being somehow “immune” to disaster. The people of the Middle East seem to be, in the eyes of such distant observers, of some of our fellow students even, dehumanized to the point of being expected– no, required– by some element of fate, to face such catastrophes.”
Then Yavuz stood up in front of strewn flowers – white roses, pink tulips, easter lilies and baby’s breath – and small electric candles. “The immeasurable trauma that the Turkish and Syrian communities experienced, coupled with the realization that our grief is not actually shared by the majority of our community at NYU,” he said, “was truly depressing. I received countless eyerolls as I sat down at our donation stand…we truly have been living in a different world than those around us…The ‘Orient’ is persistently neglected in times of crisis, demonized with barbaric stereotypes, and fetishized as a cheap, insignificant holiday destination. But Middle Easterners are not immune to pain. It is disheartening to see that however much we try, the empathy and attention of the wealthier nations is meager when it comes to us…Considering the incomparable inflation and currency devaluation in Turkey, the devastating war in Syria and the fact that many of the earthquake victims have lost the entirety of their income... the utility of a dollar might be orders of magnitude greater than its use elsewhere.”
By Feb. 16, the “Turkey Aid / TCA” WhatsApp Group had 101 participants. Members of the group chat reached out to acquaintances at various big companies, getting pledges of corporate matching from Google and Netflix. The TCA chose to donate to one of GoFundMe’s recommended, pre-vetted umbrella organizations, the Turkish Philanthropy Fund, so as to minimize bank routing fees. Other collected donations went to Ahbap, a well-known Turkish disaster relief organization. As of Feb. 22, the TCA has raised more than $35,000, which is expected to equal nearly $100,000 with corporate matching.
As Yavuz spoke at the vigil, he thanked his fellow students for their donations and volunteering. “The collective efforts of Turkish student associations across different universities in the Americas have raised funds that surpass far beyond what I could have imagined,” he said. Towards the end of his speech, he paused to look at the audience. “I felt obliged not to limit my speech to thoughts and prayers for those who are lost,” he explained. “I am aware that so much is left unsaid. How I wish there was time for prayers.”